| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Digital Hearing Aids
2. Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight): If he will make a statement on the provision of digital hearing aids. [116525]
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Jacqui Smith): Over the next two years, we are investing £94 million to make the benefits of digital hearing aids fitted as part of a modernised service available more widely on the NHS. All NHS hearing aid centres in England will be providing digital hearing aids by April 2005.
Mr. Turner : I am glad to hear it, but my constituents are concerned that they have to pay for digital hearing aids, while in wealthier places on the mainland, they are available free on the NHS. Will the Minister explain why she wrote on 27 May:
- "If the services commissioned by a PCT . . . do not meet the needs of a particular patient, then GPs do also have freedom to refer elsewhere using the Out of Area . . . arrangements",
Jacqui Smith: That is why it is important that everybody, wherever they live, gets access to digital hearing aids on the NHS. St. Mary's hospital in the hon. Gentleman's constituency is keen to take part in the modernising hearing aids scheme, and by April 2005 it will have the opportunity to do so. His constituents, along with those in the whole of England, will, for the first time, be able to get their digital hearing aids not by going private, but through the NHS.
Mr. Tom Levitt (High Peak): My hon. Friend will be aware that there are some 2 million hearing aid users and perhaps another 2 million who should be using hearing aids. Will she take it from me that to move in three or four years from a position in which no digital hearing aids were available on the NHS to one in which they are 100 per cent. available is a highly commendable achievement? Does she accept that that speed of progress is related to the training and availability of audiologists; and will she assure the House that appropriate training and recruitment of audiologists is taking place to complement the measure?
Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend, who has some expertise, is absolutely right. It is important that we not only introduce new hearing aids, but support that with a modernised service so that people can have the check-ups and preparation that are necessary to make the best use of digital hearing aids. We can do that, first, by helping staff to work in a different way and, secondly, by increasing the number of audiologists. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that from this September, three additional degree courses for audiologists are starting, with more to follow in coming years. Those courses, which are funded by the Department of Health, will ensure that we have the staff in place to match the extra investment that will make the service available to people using the NHS in England.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West): Given that the principal logjam is in gaining access to an NHS
audiologist, what progress is being made in giving private hearing aid dispensers access to the NHS contract for digital hearing aids?
Jacqui Smith: I am interested not in encouraging people to go out of the NHS privately, but in enabling people within the NHS to get digital hearing aids for free. That is why we have started private sector pilots in Leeds and Shrewsbury that use capacity in the private sector to ensure that more NHS patients get digital hearing aids, and why we are developing a national framework contract to allow us to use capacity in the private sector for NHS patients.
The hon. Gentleman's question highlights the difference between Members on this side of the House and those on the other side. He, like the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox), wants to encourage people to pay and get out of the NHS; we want to encourage people to get the service that they deserve in the NHS, and that is what we will do.
Mental Health
3. Dr. Ian Gibson (Norwich, North): If he will exempt from prescription charges people with mental health problems in need of continuing care or treatment. [116526]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ms Hazel Blears): Improving services for people with mental health problems is a priority for the Government. We aim to help those who may have difficulty in paying prescription charges, rather than extending the exemption arrangements. By using a prescription prepayment certificate, no one need pay more than £32.90 for four months, or £90.40 for 12 months, for all the NHS medication that they are prescribed.
Dr. Gibson : I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. However, what does she make of the report by Mind and Health Which? on the hidden costs of mental health, which found that 83 per cent. of people with experience of mental distress had not received the care or treatment that they needed and felt that they could not cope with life or recover, and that 59 per cent. of them were unable to afford the treatments and drugs that were on offer? Does not that represent a lack of boldness?
Ms Blears: The report is an excellent piece of work that is based on service users' experience. The Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), will meet representatives from Mind tomorrow to discuss the report's findings. It covers not only medication and prescriptions, but psychological therapies, art therapy and complementary therapy.
On access to prescriptions, if more people got pre-payment certificates they would find that a tremendous help in meeting the costs of medication. It is important to try to expand the non-drug treatments that are available in the range of mental health services. We are doing a great deal of research into therapies involving
psychological counselling, and to get more capacity into the system we have 1,000 people training to be able to provide those non-drug therapies within the NHS.
Mr. David Tredinnick (Bosworth): Is the hon. Lady aware of the survey conducted by the Depression Alliance which showed that up to 50 per cent. of those suffering from mental problems are now turning to herbal medicines, and to aromatherapy in particular? Does she not think that it would be helpful if the certificates to which she referred could encompass herbal medicine and aromatherapy, to help those affected? Is she not also absolutely ashamed of the Food Standards Agency report on vitamin supplements, which has caused such confusion? Does she agree that many doctors prescribe and encourage patients to take vitamin supplements, and that the idea that the whole nation is on the same quality of diet is absolutely ridiculous?
Ms Blears: The hon. Gentleman is fully aware that primary care trusts can now commission a whole range of therapies, because they have the resources at the front line of the service. He is also aware that there has to be a proper evidence base for those therapies to be provided. Continuing to raise the game of complementary practitioners is an important part of the service and increasing regulation. In the mental health field, a whole range of therapies is beginning to be evaluated, and the involvement of people with mental health problems in arts projects, for example, is proving extremely helpful in alleviating some of their problems and symptoms. So this is not just a matter of traditional complementary therapies; a whole range of alternatives is beginning to be offered under this Government to people with long-term mental health problems.
Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak): Will my hon. Friend assure the House that the Government will take note of the Mind report's recommendations and consider implementing them? Where gaps in provision are found—perhaps research needs to be commissioned to identify them—will the Government take steps to ensure that those gaps are filled?
Ms Blears: As I have said, the Mind report is an extremely useful piece of information based on service users' experience. I would draw Members' attention to its recommendation on ensuring that, in accordance with the Mind prescribing protocol, people with mental health problems are involved in the clinical decisions about the kind of medication that should be prescribed. Time and again, we have found that when we get expert patients involved, the medical outcomes are much better. The Mind protocol is an excellent piece of work and we shall certainly look at all the report's recommendations to see what we can take up.
Hospital Trust Deficits (Worcestershire)
4. Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire): If he will make a statement on the measures being taken to tackle the deficits of (a) the Worcestershire acute hospitals trust and (b) the South Worcestershire primary care trust. [116527]
The Minister of State, Department of Health (
Mr. John Hutton): The West Midlands South strategic health authority is currently working with both trusts to ensure a return to financial balance at the earliest possible opportunity. This will be helped by an increase of more than 30 per cent. in the resources available to the South Worcestershire primary care trust in the period 2003 to 2006.
Mr. Luff : I thank the Minister for that answer. Despite the increase in resources of which he speaks, however, the South Worcestershire primary care trust is consulting on a range of painful options involving cuts in the local health service, including downgrading the minor injuries unit at Evesham community hospital, and the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is suffering in a real struggle to bring its large cumulative deficit back into balance. On three occasions, Ministers have refused to answer my parliamentary questions on when the hospital trust will be obliged to write off its cumulative deficit. It is important for the doctors and nurses at the hospital to know what cuts in their services might be threatened, in order to bring the deficit down. I would ask the Minister—[Interruption.]—I have asked this question three times before; this is the fourth time. When will the hospital trust be obliged to write off its cumulative deficit?
Mr. Hutton: I understand the hon. Gentleman's concerns about the health service in his constituency. He will know that NHS regulations require trusts to restore financial balance within three years of the deficit arising, and that is the time frame within which his local trust must operate. I hope that that answer is helpful to him. As he is not being partisan today, I would like to offer him this comment in an equally non-partisan spirit. I hear his concerns about the resources going into his local NHS—we all do, on this side of the House—but I would simply ask him to reflect on the plausibility of his critique, given that his party voted against the resources going into the national health service at all. I hardly think that he is in a position to bemoan the lack of resources going into the NHS in Worcestershire when he and his hon. Friends voted against the increases.
Mr. Michael Foster (Worcester): Will my right hon. Friend conduct an urgent review of the services provided by Worcestershire acute hospitals trust and South Worcestershire primary care trust to see exactly what the impact of a 20 per cent. cut in funding would be on those services?
Mr. Hutton: I am not sure that I need to carry out a thorough review to decide that. Such a cut would be devastating for the NHS in my hon. Friend's constituency, and the one sure way to prevent it from happening is to make sure that that lot never get returned to office.
Dr. Richard Taylor (Wyre Forest): What response does the Minister plan to make to the highly critical
report from the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, which has just been issued, on the situation at the new Worcestershire hospital?
Mr. Hutton: I have not had the chance to read the report, but, like all reports written by the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, I will study it very carefully indeed.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |